Starting in 2017, several manuscripts and colonial-era papers were being sold at auction houses including Swann Galleries, Christie’s, and Bonhams. Most, if not all, were illegally acquired. A letter signed by Hernán Cortés in 1538 was sold for $32,500 at Swann in New York in April 2017, another sold for the same price at Christie’s months later. Another sold at Bonhams for $8,750. Scholars who discovered the missing manuscripts from the National Archives in Mexico were from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Michel Oujdik and Sebastian van Doesburg), Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (Rodrigo Martinez Baracs), University of Valladolid in Spain (María del Carmen Martínez), and independent scholar María Isabel Grañén Porrúa. Edited by Arianne Ohara